Vo Nguyen Giap, who led the Vietnamese communist armies in protracted wars against the the French, the South Vietnamese, and the Americans, began life with ambitions of being a high school history teacher.

During the Crimean War some two dozen American physicians served as volunteers with the Russian Army at Sebastopol, of whom eleven died.

In the years of peace between the world wars, George S. Patton often practiced facial expressions in front of a mirror, so that he could develop what he called his “war face.”

Urabi Pasha, who led an Egyptian nationalist revolt the early 1880s, had risen to lieutenant colonel in the Khedive’s Army within five years of the time he had joined the service as a cadet, when he was 14!

Apparently the only member of the German Reichstag to be killed-in-action during World War I was Ludwig Frank, who was a socialist, and a Jew.

On November 18, 1822, the London Observer reported that the Napoleonic battlefields of Leipzig, Austerlitz and Waterloo, had been harvested of all the human and horse bones, which had been shipped to Yorkshire to be turned into fertilizer.

In 1529 the youthful Duke of Alba (1502-1582), yearning to spend a few hours with his young bride, rode from Hungary, where he was serving against the Turks, to Spain and back again, a minimal distance of 2200 miles, in the remarkably short time of 17 days, for an average daily rate of nearly 130 miles.

Among the numerous units raised by the United States Army during World War II weresome composed largely of Black Americans, Japanese-Americans, American Indians, Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, Norwegians, Greeks, Samoans, and even Austrians.